This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Why have a secret plan if it basically recommends we keep doing what we've been doing?

The Utah Water Strategy Advisory Team was formed in 2013 to take a long-term look at water in Utah, a state that is at the top of the nation for both water consumption and birth rate. Add in the effects of climate change, and Utah faces serious water challenges over the coming decades. A top-level look at water is certainly in order.

The advisory group includes a healthy spectrum of water suppliers, regulators, users and scientists, and they have been working for nearly three years to gather public input and data into a document to present to the governor.

But leaders of the advisory team this week refused to release a draft report of recommendations while team members review it. "What we don't want," one of the group's co-chairman said, "is to have a draft tried in a court of public opinion" before the entire advisory committee has reviewed it.

Utah thankfully is a state with strong laws regarding government transparency. State and local entities are wisely limited in the criteria they can use for doing the public's business out of the public eye. Those criteria have to do with personnel issues, where employees have privacy rights, litigation issues, where legal strategies can be weakened by public disclosure, and investigative issues, where disclosure could hurt the prosecution of crimes.

Nowhere does it say that secrecy is OK to avoid "the court of public opinion."

Even Gov. Gary Herbert's office said Tuesday that he is fine with releasing the draft, which is good because the Tribune and others already had a copy.

Despite the opacity, the draft document is almost stunning in how little it proposes changing course. Utah's celebrated pioneer history was built on diverting water to irrigate dry valleys, and the draft plan seems unrelenting in continuing that philosophy of diversion despite environmental costs.

"We envision working within the prior appropriation system to refine transparent, cost-effective and fair processes to allocate and resolve conflicts over water," the plan's vision statement says.

The summary of recommendations says, "Utahns value self-sufficiency and locally grown food and they prefer not to satisfy Utah's water needs by shifting substantial quantities of water from agriculture."

Let's be honest. Utah does not come anywhere close to feeding itself from its own agriculture, and it never will. The biggest crop produced in Utah is alfalfa, which no person eats. Our current system of water allocation doesn't make us self-sufficient. It just protects what is now a relatively small contributor to the Utah economy.

If we insist on meeting the needs of the next 40 years without cutting into the cheap and plentiful water going to farmers, we will have to build expensive and environmentally damaging water projects like the Lake Powell pipeline and Bear River dams. The draft plan says as much.

There is another way, but it will take Utah's leaders taking a hard look at our priorities. If we want to keep a livable environment while we double our population, we're going to have to make less hay. That should be no secret.